Max Frost
Fri
July 26, 2019
8:30 pm
CDT
(Doors: 7:30 pm )
$12.00
With SWELLS opening.
Doors open at 730 and show time at 830.
Tickets are $10 in adv and $12 day of show (if avail).
VIP Tickets are $50 and include: 1 GA Ticket, Meet and Greet and Photo with Max Frost, 1 Exclusive Max Frost Flag and Early Entry into Venue.
Tickets go on sale wed June 5th at 10am. Get adv tickets at www.soulkitchenmobile.com or by calling 866.777.8932.
Under 18 with a parent only.
Performing as part of the Law Offices of Alexander Shunnarah & Assoc Concert Series.
Max Frost
Last year,
Max Frost
had a creative awakening.
Since be
coming a professional musician
and scoring
genre
-
mashing
hits
including “White Lies” and “Adderall
,”
the forward
-
thinking pop maestro
felt he hadn’t shown his true colors
. “I realized I needed to
c
ompletely chan
ge what I was doing and
what I was trying to create into something a
little bolder, a little bit
more honest and less controlled,” he says.
“
I needed to take the
veil
off
and let myself be a little more naked and a little more direct
.” He’d s
pent
nearly
his
entire
life in Austin, Texa
s, so moving to Los Angeles in 2017
“was about having a
fresh start
--
reinventing myself as much as a person as an artist.”
Once he touched down
in LA, he
immediately got to work
creating what turned out to be so
me
of the most
inventive
songs
of his young career.
“I finally had the balls to be vulnerable,” says Frost, who
once in LA
teamed up wit
h
Michael “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (Fitz and T
he Tantrums
)
and began constructing the songs that
would comprise
Gold Rush
, hi
s major
-
label full
-
length debut LP, e
xecutive produced by
Fitz
, with
major help from
Mick Schultz (Rihanna, Jeremih).
Reflecting
on
the personal
and creative journey he’s
undergone
in the past year, Frost says he’s finally freed himself
of self
-
imposed res
trictions and become
“one
-
hundred percent honest”
with himself as
both a
human being
and songwriter. “I stopped trying to control how cool my music
came
across and just be myself,” he says.
“
I had to let it be open and direct and in
-
your
-
face.”
Now the
2
6
-
year
-
old singer, multi
-
instrumentalist and dynamic live performer, who
in a
few short years has
seen his star rise in a major way thanks to tours
with everyone from
Twenty One Pilots, Panic! At The Disco, Fitz and The Tantrums, and Gary Clark Jr.,
being
f
eatured on
a recent DJ Snake single
and
having
four consecutive songs go to
Number
One on
HypeMachine,
says he’s never been adamant about pushing the limits of
what constitutes pop music. “I definitely care way less now about trying to be
niche,”
says the
quick
-
witted
singer behind the infectious, groove
-
anchored new single “Good
Morning.” “I’ve realized that I want to make stuff that a lot more people can relate to and
can be affected by. If you’re just trying to make these weird songs and if you’re
consci
ously trying to be eclectic,” he adds, “I think that’s as cheesy as consciously trying
to be commercial.”
Frost
admits
there was a time he tried to talk himself out of making pop music. “I used
to
purposely avoid
putting
hooks in a song,” says the
musicia
n whose soul
-
infected sonic
gems
have soundtracked a global Beats by Dre campaign and been featured in television
shows including “Power” and “Brave,” “But
honestly
I almost feel like you’re going
against biology if you’re trying to make music that doesn’t
have hooks. Because if you
boil it down it’s like,
what’s a hook?’ It’s something that hits y
our brain in this specific
way.”
Creative freedom, and the ability to write and record
music driven by
feeling and instinct,
has
always
been central to Frost’s m
usical mindset. Playing the drums and guitar by age
eight, and
typically
the youngest members of the
diverse
bands he was in as a teenager
—
eve
rything from bluegrass to blues and
jazz
to hip
-
hop
—
Frost says it was
the emotional
connection to the music th
at forever drove his passion. “It never really occurred to me
that
music was something I was
into
growing up,” he admits,
“It was just something that
was
. So I try to stay committed to that original place of no ego. Of music just being this
beautiful benev
olent thing.”
By the time he was enrolled at the University of Texas
-
Austin
,
he was obsessively
writing and recording R&B
-
and
-
hip
-
hop
inform
ed pop music in his dorm room. By then
he
’d decided a career in music, no m
atter how uncertain, was his path forwar
d.
“
White
Lies,”
though
, changed everyt
hing: nearly one
year after first uploading the f
alsetto
-
strewn
song
to SoundC
loud,
prominent blogs
began
to share it and a palpable buzz began
to develop around it.
Within
weeks
the song
hit Number One on HypeMachine
’s
“Most
Popular Tracks on Blogs Now,” and
led
to Frost signing his deal
with
Atlantic Records.
“That song broke doors down,” Frost recalls, still seemingly amazed at how fast his life
was altered
by it
. “I went from playing a South By Southwest showca
se where nobody
was there t
o signing this huge record deal.”
But rather
than revel in his newfound success, Frost doubled down on
refining
both
his
songwriting
and live
performance chops
.
He speaks passionately a
bout continually
tinkering with
his already
notoriously high
-
energy one
-
man live show, one that typically
finds him bouncing around the stage,
playing every single instrument himself, whipping
his fans into a manic fervor
.
“I
’ve tortured myself to invent it to where it is now,” he says
of his live
show.
Furthermore,
in the studio Frost
found a mentor in
Fitz
.
“
He’s had a tremendous
influence in my creative process and
sometimes
saves me from myself
,”
Frost
says of
Fitz
who he
refers
to
as his “
songwriting
fitness coach
.
”
The
tireless effort is no
w reaping massive rewards:
Frost’s
debut
album
is
comprised of
some of the singer’s most inventive songs yet
, and ones
that veer from electro
-
soul
(“Slow Jamz”) to funk (“Money Problems”) and
anthemic
arena sing
-
alongs
(“Eleven
Days”).
As
he looks ahead
and
continually
redefines
his artistry via production work for breaking
talent including Mike Waters
, Wild Child, and UPSAH
L,
Frost says
he finally feels he’s
being c
ompletely himself as an artist but is hardly
afraid to continue reinventing his craft.
“
Sometimes it feels
like I’m juggling fire,”
he
adds
with a laugh.
“
But I think that’s
the
only way to live.